Ode to Toronto

You gotta love a city with this public sculpture.

I already published my cycling Ode to Toronto, and, since I love it not only for its cycling resources but also its crafting, I had to write about it here as well!

We visited the Kensington Market neighborhood, home to Lettuce Knit, a beautiful yarn store with a lot packed into a small space.

While in the neighborhood, T. and I both tried to cure our cold with miso soup and hot and sour soup from this really yummy vegan Chinese restaurant.

Then, over to Romni Wools, which is truly the largest yarn store I have EVER been in (and I've been in a LOT of yarn stores). They were having a boxing day sale, and it was great fun to look around, and even fun to wait in line for 20 minutes. It gave us lots of time to admire all the hand-knitted hats, scarves, and gloves worn by the knitters of Toronto.

If you ever go to Toronto, stroll along Queen Street West. Once you get past the chain stores, you'll come upon amazing deals on fabric and beads, and a cool book store, paper store, and more yarn. I always find just walking in and out of the stores to be inspiring.

On the next day, we went down to the harborfront and saw some contemporary art, along with a whole craft center, with a fiber artist in residence who de-constructs old sweaters and re-creates them into beautiful sculptures.

Finally, I highly recommend the Textile Museum. Even for non-fiber artists, its exhibits are interesting and inspiring. Unfortunately, my camera died the day we were there, which is too bad because there were some beautiful pieces. So, you'll just have to go yourself!